Portugal: JOC against youth indebtednessCatholic Worker Youth (JOC) has launched a national campaign to raise young people’s awareness and help them reflect on the causes of why they get into debt. The campaign’s main aim is to heighten young people’s consciousness about their financial decisions and induce a profound change of heart. Interpreting the current reality, and attempting to identify the main causes that prevent the young from fully realizing themselves, thus prejudicing their dignity and freedom, the militants of the movement have chosen a slogan that has the aim of opening a problematic discussion: “Getting into debt! Where can it lead us?”. “It’s just this we intend to discover with our proposed campaign, in so far as the discussion will be able to identify and develop alternative options and changes to the current reality” – announced Ana Rita Moreira, JOC secretary -. “It will be important to reflect on the phenomenon that is at times considered an indispensable need, but that needs to be tackled in a responsible and conscientious way, because it’s an option that, if it is evaluated with superficiality, may lead to very dangerous situations at the human and social level”. “Together with other youth, we hope to discover how this enormous financial business is structured and generated; it’s a system that presents itself in the seductive guise of a quick road to happiness, in which it’s enough to ask and money is forthcoming as a easy solution to all our problems – added Ana Moreira: “In this sense, JOC is proposing to meet all kinds of youth, whether they be workers, students or unemployed, to understand their daily difficulties, attempt to forge together a collective consciousness of the situations they are experiencing, and, in the light of the Gospel, try to put in place systems of counselling and guidance that may permit the development of actions to transform their reality, with the aim of improving the living conditions of young workers, and fostering their dignity as free men and women”. The national campaign will be articulated in several stages of “Revision of Life”: “Seeing”, from September to December 2008; “Judging”, from January to March 2009; “Acting”, from April to June 2009, while the conclusions will be debated in a “final meeting”, still to be defined. Scotland: fund for pregnant mothers suffering from cancerCardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh has given his backing, and that of the Scottish Church, to the launch of a new fund that will help mothers who develop cancer while awaiting the birth of their child. The “Andrea Kearney Fund”, as it is called, was set up to commemorate Andrea Kearney, wife of the head of the communications office of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference, who was diagnosed with cancer at the start of 2007 and died earlier this year, when she was awaiting the birth of her fifth child. Andrea was 41 when she died in May 2008 after sixteen months of treatment. “I’m very happy to support the Fund and hope that in the years to come it may provide assistance to women faced with the daunting challenge of a diagnosis with cancer while awaiting the birth of their child”, said the cardinal, explaining the reasons that prompted him to support the initiative. “Andrea was a woman of great faith who inspired many people. Her strength during her illness was an example to us all. Through this fund she will continue to inspire us as she did during her life”, he added. A fund-raising evening of music and entertainment to collect donations for the new fund is being organized and will be held at the Radisson Hotel in Glasgow on Sunday 9 November. For his part, Peter Kearney, Andrea’s husband, said how happy he was about the cardinal’s support.Belgium: children at the sanctuary of BanneuxTo mark the 75th anniversary of the apparitions of Banneux and missionary month, the intercultural “Missio” day on the theme: “Become a peacemaker” was held at Banneux on Saturday, 11 October. Over 1200 children aged between 10 and 12 arrived at the sanctuary for the event. There they were divided, according to their interests, into 120 workshops with various offers of educational and recreational activities, ranging from dancing to accounts of the various traditions in the world, from Arab calligraphy to exotic cooking, from make-up to dancing with disabilities: each workshop was led by a “witness” who recounted his own experience in the various parts of the world and the various cultures encountered in missionary work. In recent days all the inhabitants of Banneux opened the doors of their homes to provide hospitality to the visiting children and thus foster a spirit of exchange and sharing. The participants also included the Bishop of Liege, the Most Rev. Aloys Jousten.
